A 665 ton Travel Lift and the 82 foot expedition yacht the "Quan Yin" which was build by Custom Steel Boats in the yard at Marine Group Boat Works, LLC in Chula Vista.
— John R. McCutchen / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Ship fitter Robert Bawkey puts a bevel on a plate prior to welding two plates together for the main deck of an RTSC-110 (Range Training Support Craft) that is being built at Marine Group Boat Works, LLC in their Chula ...
— John R. McCutchen / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Todd Roberts, Vice President Marine Group Boat Works, LLC aboard the an RTSC-110 (Range Training Support Craft) that was built in their Chula Vista boat yard.
— John R. McCutchen / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Welder Josh Ryerson welds on the hull of an RTSC-110 (Range Training Support Craft) that is being built at Marine Group Boat Works, LLC in their Chula Vista boat yard
— John R. McCutchen / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Chula Vista  The whir of power drills and whack of hammers echo across the Marine Group Boat Yard, drowning out the cry of birds that arc above the company’s docks on San Diego Bay. The clamor is a bit surprising. The yard, which used to be called South Bay, was supposed to be a ghost town by now.

As a company history notes, the well-known Engel Brothers (Herb, Art and David) let the quality of the work done at their yard to slide. Business fell, and the family hired a young boating expert named Todd Roberts to close the place.

Roberts whittled the work force to five people. But along the way, he sensed that he could reverse the yard’s fortunes largely by hustling for contracts to service large, privately owned yachts, a fast-growing corner of the boating industry.

He asked the Engel brothers for the chance to try. They said yes, making the 29-year-old Roberts vice president and giving him a very short period of time to turn things around.

The gamble paid off.

Today, Marine Group is humming. It has 102 employees who do everything from overhauling sleek, handsome superyachts to servicing short, homely tugboats. The company also is doing more business with the military. It won a $30 million contract to design and build three 114-foot boats that the Navy will use to tow and retrieve targets. Marine Group recently launched the first of the vessels. And on Tuesday the company said it got a $1.3 million contract to design and build a pair of tugboats for the Navy. (News story). Roberts will quickly hire five workers, and he says he’ll add about 20 more if the company gets a contract to construct a 180-foot barge.

Roberts, now 37, recently discussed the turnaround.

Q: You were hired to close a boat yard that had been losing money for years. How did you convince the Engel family that the yard could thrive financially?

A: I saw the boatyard’s financial status. I knew and understood why the owners wanted to shut the place down, so I started working at South Bay Boatyard with that frame of mind. (The company was renamed Marine Group in 2006.)

Closing down a business is harder than it sounds. You don’t just lock the door and then file away the key. In fact, I learned more about running a boatyard in the process of shutting it down than I would have had I started the business from the ground up.

I did lots of research and spoke to many experts to figure out things like the value of the assets, what the change in value would be in six months versus 12 months, etc. I knew way more marine industry statistics than I knew what to do with. Because much of it relied on forecasts, I saw where the industry was headed. The statistics that stuck were (that) ... I think it was something like 650 superyachts (boats over 100 feet) were being built in the world at the time, and it seemed like everyone on the Forbes list had a private yacht or was chartering one.